Miami Student

Issue date: 3/28/08 Section: Campus

Left to right: Miami students Ann Davis, David Orwig, Michael Lin and Amanda Zazycki received a fellowship after taking first place in an international competition hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

John Mayer sang that this generation is waiting for the world to change. Four Miami University seniors beg to differ, and they're aiming to change the world-at least part of it-themselves.

The students, all international studies majors, received $50,000 fellowships for winning first place in an international competition hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for their senior capstone project, "Look Up: Rainwater Harvesting." The competition involved envisioning steps toward the restoration of Jerusalem to a peaceful and sustainable region by the year 2050.

Seniors Michael Lin, Ann Davis, Amanda Zazycki and David Orwig, researched alternative methods of providing the city of Jerusalem with an effective means of lessening its overwhelming dependency on extracting water from the Jordan River Basin. They concluded that the most effective way to mitigate the pressing issue is to test the idea of harvesting rainwater.

According to Lin, 62 percent of Jerusalem's usage of the Jordan River's two aquifers is currently used to irrigate the city's crops, which only accounts for 2.5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP).

Davis added that when these aquifers contain low amounts of water, they become contaminated with groundwater. With assistance from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) through funding, education and training, restoring the aquifers with rainwater may be the most viable solution to preventing the struggling city from experiencing what many sources predict to be a permanent drought in 20-30 years.

"With UNEP's knowledge and experience with this task, we felt that their expertise would steer us in the right direction," Lin said. "They're mediators with a solution."

UNEP works with environmental issues in struggling states through the authority of the United Nations, and may be a key factor in settling the water shortage issue in Jerusalem, which the team believes will help relieve economic tensions between Palestinians and Israelis.

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